On April 11, famous Japanese AV star Sora Aoi (苍井空) created huge buzz in the Chinese Twitter community, both girls and boys are twitting about her. Since the news about Sora Aoi registered her twitter account @aoi_sola broke out, many Chinese netizens on Sina Micro blog “climbed over the wall” in order to follow her. (Twitter is blocked in China) The number of her followers on twitter was growing at the rate of 37 per minute. As for now, she has over 30,193 followers and her first tweet message was posted on March 30. For that Sora Aoi was puzzled, and began to interact with the fans through tweets saying thanks.

She was especially surprised about the number of Chinese followers from China, she tweeted:

I know Chinese don’t understand Japanese.so I try to write in English.but when I wrote in Japanese,I can’t translation in English.SORRY!! about 17 hours ago via Twittelator

Some netizen suggested “a call to all Sina, QQ and other mainland micro-blog users to tweet the message, using this opportunity of discovering Sora Aoi to spread the knowledge of how to get over the wall.”

The Sora Aoi Night

On April 11, around 8 pm, one Chinese netizen discovered Sora Aoi’s twitter account, and quickly spread the news. Some other well-known Japanese AV stars’ twitter accounts were also discovered. This netizen wrote on his Sina micro-blog, “Do you want to be face to face with Sora Aoi? Then go on Twitter, can’t get on twitter? Then send email to mytwitterclient@gmail.com, it has auto reply.”

prior to her account being discovered, she only had a few hundred followers and most of them are from Japan. Once “discovered” the number of her followers reached tens of thousands just in one day.

Yesterday, a well-known columnist in the Chinese Internet community Hecaitou (和菜头) updated his Sina micro-blog with a sentence in Japanese: “The night of Sora Aoi breaks ten thousand mark, Hecaitou is one of Sora Aoi’s ten thousand fans.” AV stars like Sora Aoi are very popular amongst the Chinese adolescents and even seen as “the great sexual enlightenment.” Just like what Hecaitou said “Aoi teacher, thank you for many years of hard work, we should present certificates of appreciation to her.” He said “so many years, finally get to meet AV stars on twitter, for the first time I feel the internet is real.”

Many netizens believe that the reason Sora Aoi’s twitter was madly worshipped is because this is the first large scale of direct dialogue on twitter with a real (famous) person from a different country.

White House Twitter account and other political figures etc. on Twitter are limited within the scope of “political tweets”, lack of individual interactions. However some netizens think that the wild pursuit of Sora Aoi on Twitter “only shows that Chinese netizens are really bored (无聊 also means trashy and disgusting).” The Chinese followers are mostly Zhainan (宅男: Guys that only stays at home)

(Editor’s note: Zhainan, 宅男: the term is originated from Japan {also the girl’s version is宅女}, the meaning of Zhainan when referring to one self is totally different from when referring to others. When used for laughing at oneself, it means I don’t like to go out of the house much, I watch TV and play computer all day. When used on others, it often means the person lives in a fantasy world, or stays home and do not have social interactions, do not pay attention to personal hygiene and so on negative connotations.)

One man named Song Shinan (宋石男) wrote on twitter ”Sora Aoi teacher, I am Song Shinan, living in mainland China, one of your regular fans, do not be surprised that your twitter followers are soaring, you know you are very popular in China. We all love you. At the same time I want to toot my own horn, I helped at least thousands of Twitterers to interact with you on Twitter.”

Where are the fans coming from?

Many netizens questioned the identities of Sora Aoi’s Twitter followers, because Twitter is blocked in mainland China, many netizens cannot access the Twitter website. Also, because Sora Aoi is in the adult entertainment industry and pornography is illegal in China, distributing her works will be a serious crime. Therefore whether it is Twitter or even accessing news about Sora Aoi netizens in China must use software to get over the Great Firewall. However, most of the followers that interact with Sora Aoi use simplified Chinese, they are mostly from mainland China! The joke is, when Sora Aoi is discovered on Twitter, it made many Chinese people to learn how to use software to get over the wall.

“我使用的是翻译。谢谢。在中国我的球迷。 I use a translator in chinese. Thank you for my fans in China.”

Her chosen, badly translated phase for “fan” was actually “soccer fan” (球迷), chosen from the translator that she was using, i.e.: “I am using a translator. Thanks. My soccer fans in China.” This line, of course, led to many jokes. A Chengdu news portal wrote:

“A netizen who calls himself “mywindson” joked: “Soccer fan was a really good choice of expression. What else apart from her “two balls” are we so enamoured with?”

At the time I was working in a big business hotel in China, checking at the Google research history in the guests’ internet room, most entries were about “AV”, “SM”, “japanese porn” and other porn related keywords.

In dieser ganz besonderen Zeit freuen wir uns, all jenen einen Gruss zu senden, deren Freundschaft und Wohlwollen wir schaetzen. At this special time of year, it´ s a pleasure to greet those friendship and goodwill are so deeply appreciated.

Sora is a goodess!A eyecandy for every man,and for much woman too,i guess!
Her natural beauty,her hotness and her natural acting makes her so much special!Her smiles and loughing are so normal that every must fall in love!
Asian girls are so much sexy anyway,but this girl is pure poison!
And i love to feel it in my venes!
Peter